ok, here’s the old menu’s before tabs were introduced as an addon called toolbox.
https://github.com/meta-androcto/blenderpython/blob/master/scripts/addons_extern/space_view3d_toolbox.py
@Meta-Androcto: Works for me, thanks! 
@michalis and Sanctuary: Thanks for the support, and this has been mentioned before, so we are not alone
EDIT:
<----------This guy rocks! 
worried about workflow speed
uses mouse interface
facepalm.jpegif
This isn’t about how fast you can press a button, it’s about functions that belong together, although clicking those buttons is a hell of a lot faster than using Ctrl+N. 
I’m quite a lazy blender user, both with scripting & forgetting the best ui practice, which is >>>
“One hand on the mouse, One hand on the keyboard”
This is how Blender is used/designed. imo.
However, some of us like to just click buttons to do the work, read menu’s to understand the program & use blender one handed when the baby has chewed our arms off, or we lost one in the war, or the beer is in the other hand, or we have no real pressure to finish a project & can simply take our time to execute simple tasks from a menu rather than a hot key, or we are young & need something simpler to lead us into the 3d world…
@bleucd This looks like outdated addons. Sorry, you have to wait for their devs to update their code, and then update.
Well, for high usability you need operators distributed into logical categories - so you can find the one you are looking for quickly. You guys wouldn’t have any trouble finding Recalculate and Flip Normals under Tools and not under Shading, but only because you are used to it.
But it’s true that normals that are not matching occur quite often during modeling - especially when you make faces between parts that were not connected by a face before. I guess a nice solution would be a smart automatic recalculate, that would flip normals automatically each time you create such faces. I would also welcome a setting that would force the flat/smooth shading on an object and keep it. Currently I solve both problem by a custom “Unify Shading” macro, that recalculates normals on the whole mesh and sets the shading to smooth. I can share it if anyone is interested.
Duplicated normals on the other hand - it’s a user error.
Why is this idea so hard to understand…? No amount of interface polishing is going to substitute for the boost you get from using hotkeys. In fact the more mouse interface you have the less likely you are to switch to hotkey usage.
And if you don’t like the normal commands where they are, change it! It’s one copy/cut and paste away!
@DruBan: You can change themes also, baa-ZING! 
Just playing around 
For the record, I use those normal buttons often, but that’s about it, I am all about hotkeys :yes: Not sure where people are getting that me or whoever only use the button interface because some function belongs with another function, like it was originally. 
As you can see I agree with you about the location of those buttons… I know you have way more experience with Blender than to need to be told about hotkeys, I was certainly not referring to you… The toolbar is useful to hold those operators that DON’T have hotkey and I don’t want to give them one because 1. I don’t use them often enough, or several times in succession, 2. I don’t wan to use up all my unassigned hotkeys, which are pretty scarce! I like your theme!
@Meta-Androcto, I wasn’t talking about the complete overhaul that you did, but just the addition of the two buttons to the ‘tools’ tab being one copy, one paste, and four spaces. Since it makes so much sense to move them.